


The Bear and the Cocoa

by love2imagine



Category: White Collar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 06:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13141188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love2imagine/pseuds/love2imagine
Summary: Just a few thought about early Christmasses and why they came to be special.





	The Bear and the Cocoa

**Author's Note:**

> Characters are originally created by Jeff Eastin. Who knows who owns them now, but I do not...but their spirits can communicate with us all, yay! Story mine, mistakes mine.

 

 

 

 

Things moved before eyes unable to focus so far. The visible world was made up of cold dark and cold light. The world was a cold, cold, faceless place, without warmth, without softness. He was quite aware of this even though he had no words to express his thoughts but the feelings were strong. And then there was something that wasn’t within itself warm, but kept him warm. He blinked gratefully, but knew that survival was still unlikely. He decided that this did not bother him. After all, he had experienced very little of life, and what he had was decidedly …sad. He drew himself within, and waited for the inevitable. Here he felt safe, removed from the cold and hunger, the pain and the loneliness.

 

A soft voice, welcoming, and he was made comfortable. Something within him attempted without words or numerals to estimate his chances of survival with this new information, and decided to shelve the problem for a later time, should he then exist. He did comprehend that he and his soft sidekick had little to rely on besides each other.

 

But something outside of their two selves wrapped them in warm blankets, cleaned them and fed them. Not once, but regularly. As he enjoyed the sustenance, Mozzie began to recalculate the odds favourably.

 

Mr. Jeffreys called him Charles, he went by the name Adolphus, then Homer, then JSM (for John Stuart Mill). The other children called him Weirdo, Four-eyes and Shorty. He realised before he fully understood the concepts clearly that, as all magicians know, ascertaining someone’s (or something’s) real name gives you power over him, her or it. Therefore he invented names and used them for a week. Mr. Jeffrey’s didn’t mind, and eventually, for ease, he became known not for himself, but for his bear. The man who would be known (amongst other things, many other things) by a fuzzy toy’s moniker was about to Christen himself Nichola, having discovered the genius of Tesla, but _just_ too late!  Mozzie: not even the bear’s real name, so he (the bear) was also safe from evil spells, but it was the closest his owner could come to the pronunciation when he first named his friend.

 

They were an interesting duo: one soft, cute, loveable, huggable and not top-heavy with grey matter, they other about as close to the opposite of those adjectives as was possible for his age. The one invited contact and companionship, the other…well…

 

Neither spoke  a great deal, and only in the presence of each other, or Mr. Jeffreys.

 

Perhaps it was fitting, the transference of the name if not the nature. After all, he never really had anyone to snuggle up to on any sort of regular basis but that bear. And we all need someone or something to cuddle, to hold close, to feel warmed and protected by. The bear blindly and mindlessly saved the boy from a total psychopathy or even reactive attachment disorder.

 

Mr. Jeffreys cared deeply for his small and brilliant ward, feared for him and did what he could to help him develop that prodigious brain, but he was a busy man with scores of children to care for, with an organisation to run and funds to raise. And he didn’t know how to reach across the void which Mozzie wrapped about himself, the seclusion which protected him, which no-one before a bright young protégé of his own breached – at least in part. And, being an honest man, he knew that though he was bright, the bear-name bearer was so far above him that it was only because of the child’s lack of inches and experience that he could help him at all!  But he did what he could.

 

Mozzie came to understand the intellectual limitations of his father-substitute as he learnt to appreciate the large capacity of the man’s heart, saw the difference and perceived which was more important. He also understood that Mr. Jeffreys was so far above him that it was only because the giant stooped to him that they could connect at all!

 

  Mozzie also came to understand the limitations of all the rest of the representatives of humanity around him. He sensed that they were all damaged, all hurting, all lashing out like trapped rats, picking on the easiest prey. From the earliest time a boy poked him viciously in the ribs, took his glasses and broke them, called him names or damaged his beloved bear…he knew. He understood the pain and the hurt and the need to exert some sort of power over the environment, however small and petty that show of power was. He saw,  because he became an expert at truly watching, that the original hurt still controlled them, negating their loud voices and brazen manners. He understood that power doesn’t come from pushing, hurting and yelling, but being free of the need to do so. He became an expert on freedom. He wanted nothing to do with events or systems or indeed people who wished to control.

 

Sometimes these things were overt and unsubtle, like the yelling, punching, snatching lonely boys on the playground. Sometimes, like the international control of money and movement of supposedly free men and women across borders, it went unnoticed by the many. All were ugly in the extreme, repulsive to surely anyone – certainly to Mozzie! Most of this he gleaned from his reading…he could read quickly with almost total comprehension and recall from the age of four. He could never remember, however good his memory, not being able to read, to place his thoughts in systematic order. He found it almost impossible to comprehend that he was rare if not unique in this…how had mankind survived all these millennia?

 

His observations saddened him, rather than enraged. To rage was to waste valuable time and energy better utilised in planning ways of avoiding or if necessary overcoming the multiple menaces.

 

Mr. Jeffreys understood many of the facts Mozzie had gathered. He was a very highly intelligent man of varied interests, and he came to many of the same conclusions Mozzie did about the corruption and evil, but he didn’t have the strength of character or the dedication to build himself a freeworld within the slaveworld. He had considered it, a decade before, but had felt the opposition to be overwhelmingly strong. He didn’t have the deep and comprehensive understanding that his very young friend did, but was proud of having helped such an outstanding mental ability survive the cradle, while sensing that Mozzie pitied him just a little for yielding, even though in that very yielding he helped the children, helped Mozzie himself.

 

Both were islands within the human society, having no-one but each other with whom to communicate their deepest thoughts, and that had taken time to accomplish. Mr. Jeffreys shortened his strides to allow Mozzie to keep up, Mozzie slowed his thoughts so Mr. Jeffreys' could… but at least they managed to walk and talk together.

 

In one area they differed. Mozzie saw any religion or faith as another method of control. He mentally and emotionally turned away when Mr. Jeffreys alluded to it in any way. He read about evolution, and believed that it was a fact accepted by clear and logical thinkers. Evolution obviated the need for a God who created. If Mr. Jeffreys drew comfort from that myth, Mozzie was kind enough and mature enough to allow him that.

 

But in skimming through scientific papers, especially statistics and then advanced non-Newtonian physics, he began to wonder. Not that he believed in a God or anything, but he realised that Darwinian evolution, and the newer décor of neo-Darwinism actually explained almost nothing, and had no factual basis. It was a pretty theory, a lovely example of lateral thinking, considering Darwin’s confining background and society, but as Man’s artificially-enhanced vision grew more acute, the very convolution of the cell, of DNA and RNA and their whole essential suites of proteins, the irreducible complexity of protein machines found in some of the simplest living organisms baffled him. There was no explanation in any of the literature as to how such things could develop step-wise, as evolution theory demanded, retaining their ability at every stage to take part in the competition at the very core of the  ‘survival of the fittest’ process. The chances against all the right mutations happening simultaneously was astronomically large…actually, far larger than that! Some of those tiny machines were made of thousands of parts, each demanding exactly the right proteins, in turn demanding exactly the right amino acids in the correct forms, the right enzymes and co-factors.

 

Puzzled by the lack of work attempting to bridge these gaping holes, Mozzie turned elsewhere.

 

There were parallel complications from physics, such as the axioms of thermodynamics. There were the problems of the original probiotic ‘soup’ which had to be totally reducing for the stable formation of amino acids…yet if they had become ‘alive’ (and no-one gave a semblance of a method for making the first bit of protein come alive, sloppily assuming the fact!) they would have immediately died for lack of oxygen and carbon dioxide as exists now. No evidence that a totally reducing atmosphere had ever existed on Earth had surfaced! And then there was the problem of chirality…!

 

Mozzie enjoyed a puzzle, but here he felt that he was working with very few of the pieces…in fact, he felt as though someone had muddled several jig-saws, removed two-third of the totally number of pieces and provided a different picture to assemble altogether!

 

The papers of non-biological scientists, especially mathematicians, often quivered with uncertainty when it came to how evolution could be true in the light of modern advancements. Only the biologists marched on, not only refusing to attempt to explain how each multi-facetted interdependent molecular machine evolved, but ignoring the problems altogether. Was there a third explanation of how the teeming life on the planet had come to be? No-one was looking for it: they either credited God or evolution. But at the root of things (as it were!) evolution didn’t even touch on the _reason_ for the original ‘big bang’…things don’t just change without an outside force acting upon them! And God…well…

 

Mozzie recognised a cover-up when he saw it. Whether evolution was true or not, the very experts who should have been teasing apart the strands of data to show how it all fit together were merely bullying anyone who raised questions, denigrating their mental capacities, their education and their…religious beliefs.

 

_Hmmm…_ thought Mozzie…. _hmmm…interesting. Are they attacking God because they feel He is attacking them? Because He imposes moral structure they do not wish to obey? Why? God, if He exists, just is. Even the Bible says so.  
_

 

 

Mozzie went back and rapidly re-read the whole Bible through in various translations, looking up some of the words in Hebrew- or Greek-to-English dictionaries. He had not bothered to learn Greek yet, nor Hebrew.

 

He noted that the age of the Biblical writings were quite well known. There was intellectual provenance, as it were. There was no chance they were modern fakes, because of such confirmation as the Dead Sea Scrolls. And he noticed in passing that the Book contained scientific facts, sometimes quaintly described, but mentioned there long before these concepts had entered secular thought.

 

_Which doesn’t mean God exists! Sophisticated aliens could have shared their knowledge (which doesn’t explain how life on **their** planet came to be!) . Or – or there could have been a previous highly-advanced human society, such as Plato’s Atlantis (ditto). Either seem more possible than an invisible, loving, creator God. _

Mr. Jeffreys never prosthelytised. He was sometimes a little amused, and let it show. Mozzie noticed and turned his keen observations on his own reactions. He asked, “Why are you so certain about God, Mr. Jeffreys?”

 

“Seems to me, Mozzie, that one needs a lot more faith to believe in the alternatives. But that’s just my opinion, of course.”

 

Arguments against this rose up like angry bees within Mozzie, and he paused in wonder. That wasn’t the reaction of a logician, that was _passion_ …

 

It didn’t take him long. Unusually, he could observe his own emotions objectively if he so wished.

 

_I don’t believe in a loving, caring, all-powerful God because I didn’t know a loving father, though Mr. Jeffreys does his best. And if He was all loving and all-powerful, why did He leave me here, on the steps of this orphanage?_

That conclusion remained a stubborn wall across the landscape of his thinking.

It took him much longer to realise that being orphaned was perhaps not an argument against God, but rather for Him. In a pause between their  philosophical discussions, sitting eating Mr. Jeffreys’ sugar cookies and drinking cocoa while the snow fell outside, watching the downy fluff covering and re-covering poor Detroit’s hard ugliness in pristine beauty, he tumbled to it. A Father-God may be unlikely, yet it was about as unlikely that he would get a better and more well-rounded education within delightful academic freedom as he had enjoyed right here. The school system was, in the main, retreating from the real mission of teaching children how to think, and had resorted to merely teaching them what to think.

 

The wall crumbled. That didn’t automatically provide a conclusion, but allowed Mozzie to journey unhindered to vast vistas of thought.

 

Each year, he sipped the cocoa from a special mug kept just for him in Mr. Jeffreys’ own home, and the taste and the smell linked him to all the Christmasses before: they only had cocoa at Christmas, or at times of special need for comfort. It was too expensive to indulge often. But that made it exceptional, rare if regular, an hour hand of the clock of his life: other boys came and went, the yelling, punching bullies grew and were fostered- or aged-out of the system. Each new addition to the menagerie was easier for Mozzie to see through, outwit and manipulate, sometimes merely to keep his own security intact, sometimes to gain some little luxury. But he followed Mr. Jeffreys’ example and never hurt the small or weak or frightened. He only disarmed the mean and harsh…yes, they had been hurt, but the choice to turn around and hurt others was in their hands and hearts and they had Mr. Jeffreys’ model before them just as he did.

 

And even as he himself grew and left the Home for wider fields to harvest, he returned. Mr. Jeffreys never replaced him with another, though he always expected to find an extra boy there on Christmas day, steeled himself for that experience, but it was always just the two of them, drinking wine and eating wonderful food that Mozzie brought, sharing stories of the past year (many that Mozzie shared with no-one else, ever), debating conspiracies and mathematical constructs, fascinating codes and almost incredible new discoveries in the starry heavens and under the sea.

 

They never spoke about their pasts. Everything Mozzie was willing to share, Mr. Jeffreys already knew. Mr. Jeffreys had too much hurt and pain in his past that he only wanted to forget, not burden others with the details. And the bear, poker-faced and unblinking, was just habitually inscrutable and uncommunicative.

 

They shared stories of other miracles, too: on Mr. Jeffreys’ side, they were about small, terminally ill children whom God the loving Father healed, donations that came just when things were looking very bleak or sudden amazing deliverances of a child from the system into a perfectly-suited, caring family home; on Mozzie’s it was usually about truly wondrous heists he had accomplished without help and without turning a hair. The bear always made a silent third, still the same, safe confidante, and as the candles guttered, they drank each others health and happiness for Christmas and the new year with Mr. Jeffreys’ cocoa.

 

“Do you mind if I pray for you, Mozzie?” Mr. Jeffreys politely asked him each year as he left once more.

 

He always smiled a little smile at the two standing there together on the top step. What did it matter if Mr. Jeffreys prayed if there was nothing to pray to? But he never said that in words. It would hurt Mr. Jeffreys, and anyway, he couldn’t be _sure._

 

As the lonely, well-wrapped figure walked down the path and disappeared into the light snow with his usual aplomb, Mr. Jeffreys smiled at the blank-faced bear and whispered, “We agree that he’ll be kept safe and free, with health and wealth – free to return to us, if not before, than next Christmas, hey, Mozart?

“Why do you think he only comes here when we celebrate the birth of a little boy, heir to the throne, yet born in poor surroundings, do you think?”

 

_It might be that he yearns for the ability to believe in a loving, accepting Father God, and here, at this time, with you, he can come close. Or it may just be for the cocoa!_

But the bear said nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

The End.

 

 

Hi, all...any comments would be appreciated, as usual. Love you all and all good things come to you for the new year. Have a Happy lovely family Christmas, or however you celebrate the Solstice time!


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